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Mr. Hogan impacted many lives

The Lowell Sun

Updated:
01/28/2013 08:02:06 AM EST

"The following students are to report to detention without fail ..."

Those words, spoken countless times by Joe Hogan at the end of many a school day, still make anyone who went to Daley Junior High School in Lowell (now Daley Middle School) shudder just thinking about them.

Hogan, the former longtime principal at the Daley, was a formidable presence for more than 25 years there. He died Jan. 6 at age 79.

No disrespect intended to the late James S. Daley or his family, but the Daley School was Joe Hogan's school.

He and Vice Principal Joseph Picanso had a bit of a good-cop-bad-cop thing going long before TV and the movies made it a cliché. If you were sent to see Mr. Picanso, you breathed a sigh of relief. OK, it's not so bad. I can survive this. If you were sent to Mr. Hogan's office? That's when the bowels loosened.

I'm ashamed to say (not really, but I put it in for my mother's sake) that I spent a little bit of time in Mr. Hogan's office. Those who knew me back in my Daley School days in the late 1970s will not count me among the regular recidivists. My name and the names of those I hung with -- which included the likes of Steve Petullo, Steve Beati, Steve McNamara and even some kids whose name wasn't Steve -- were not often included on the dreaded detention detail.

We did, however, stray once in a while. (A certain trip to the Museum of Science comes to mind.) But the subsequent visit to Mr.

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Hogan's office that inevitably followed any of our misdeeds was sure to put us back on the right path ... at least until the next infraction.

Trips to the office are not fond memories, for Mr. Hogan was a principal back in the days when a principal was a principal. Back when he could be a disciplinarian without fear of reprimand or lawsuit, and when a student feared going to the principal's office -- not a fear of any physical pain (though I remember hearing stories of rulers not always being used to measure things), but a fear of Mr. Hogan's booming voice coming down on you like a ton of rulers. It was enough to set you quaking in your shoes.

One thing about Mr. Hogan: When he yelled at you or disciplined you, you knew you deserved it.

Don't get me wrong. He wasn't always yelling. There were times he'd smile and say hello in the hallways. But if you were caught doing something bad? Forget about it.

Mr. Hogan ruled the Daley School with an iron fist -- and iron lungs.

It wasn't until many years later -- decades, really -- that I discovered just how nice a guy Mr. Hogan could be. In the principal's office, he was the principal. Outside the principal's office and later, in retirement, he was a genuinely nice guy.

I bumped into him a few years back, and honestly, I didn't know what to expect. I had never spoken to him as an adult. Here it was, probably 25 years after my junior-high days, and I wasn't even sure if he'd know me.

Not only did he know me, but he smiled and said it was nice to see me. After we caught up for a few minutes, he told me he was proud to tell people I was a graduate of the Daley. Proud.

And this was the guy I and countless others feared as kids?

I realized then that while we dreaded being sent to Mr. Hogan's office, it was a fear that begat respect. We respected his authority. We respected the fact that he could set even the toughest kid's teeth chattering. We respected the fact that he was a principal who presided over a school right in his own Highlands neighborhood, where the same kid he yelled at could deliver his newspaper a few hours later and get a healthy tip.

We respected that here was a guy who was responsible for keeping one or two kids from going down the wrong path permanently.

Come to find out I'm not the only one who feels that way. When another Daley grad posted on Facebook that Mr. Hogan had died, it elicited a flurry of comments, like "a great man and a great educator," "hard but fair," "he didn't take any crap," "the type of guy the world needs today" and "he made a difference in all our lives."

These are folks who are decades removed from their time at the Daley School, but on whom Mr. Hogan had a positive impact. Not something you can say about many principals, especially in these times when a principal disciplining a child can lead to a lawsuit or, even worse, a viral video seen by thousands. Times when an assistant principal making a child mop up the blood he spilled from another kid with a well-placed punch gets in more trouble than the kid who threw the punch. (That happened a few years back at the very school over which Mr. Hogan presided.)

Mr. Hogan was hard but fair, indeed. And a heck of a nice guy to boot.

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